McCain too busy to hear about torture: Retired generals, admirals to talk torture with Presidential hopefuls, but McCain won’t be there:
A group of retired generals and admirals will sit down for informal discussions with four presidential candidates in New Hampshire over the course of this weekend. A human rights group has organized the discussions to allow the military veterans to deliver messages to the 2008 hopefuls on US detention policy in the war on terrorism and the use of torture.
But one key candidate who has become known for his anti-torture advocacy, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), will not be in attendance.
April 13th, 2007
A correspondent pointed out that I never posted a reference to this article here. In January my article Aliens in an Alien Land Iraq Through the Lens of Soldiers’ Memoirs was posted on the usual sites, including CounterPunch., Atlantic Free Press, OpEdNews, and Dissident Voice. It used three of the early memoirs by Iraq war veterans – Colby Buzzell’s My War: Killing Time in Iraq; John Crawford’s The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq; and Kayla Williams’ Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army – to examine their experience in Iraq.
Here is the introduction:
I am, rather, referring to the two zones into which Iraq has become divided, the Green Zone and the Red Zone. The Green Zone, a.k.a. the “International Zone,” the “Ultimate Gated Community,” or more appropriately, the “United States of Iraq,” is the place where the various would-be rulers of Iraq have congregated since the March-April 2003 invasion. The colonial administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), set up its headquarters here. After the June 2004 handover of “sovereignty” but little power to an Iraqi Interim Government with its Prime Minister forced upon United Nations officials nominally in charge by the United States, this government made its home in the Green Zone. The current “elected,” but largely powerless, Shia-dominated government also “rules” from this zone.
For the Americans there, life in the Green Zone resembles life in the United States, with just enough of an exotic tinge to make it interesting. “Nightclubs serve liquor, women jog in shorts and sports bras, and pool parties sometimes get wild. McDonalds and Burger King are available, though, just as in many modern American cities, kebabs served by real natives are available for the daring.
April 13th, 2007